books.google.com - Very flat, Kildare. It is the flatness of this great limestone plain with its rich pastures and its proximity to Dublin that has made Kildare a place of importance since the dawn of history. Early Christian settlements prospered here of which the Convent of St Brigid was the most famous. The Normans,...https://books.google.com/books/about/A_History_of_County_Kildare.html?id=hp5nAAAAMAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareA History of County Kildare

A History of County Kildare

Very flat, Kildare. It is the flatness of this great limestone plain with its rich pastures and its proximity to Dublin that has made Kildare a place of importance since the dawn of history. Early Christian settlements prospered here of which the Convent of St Brigid was the most famous. The Normans, with their infallible eye for good land, quickly made it their own and built a series of great tower houses and castles to defend the Pale from the Gaels of Wicklow and the south midlands. The county was the home of the Geraldines, the Leinster branch of the FitzGerald family, which completely dominated political life in late medieval Ireland, and later went on to be the only ducal family in Ireland.